


Markings

by Hootax



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Dreams, GoT, GoT spoilers, Kissing, M/M, Spoilers, Visions, Weirwood(s), human!night king, icy!night king, nightraven, raven bran
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-26 15:36:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19008730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hootax/pseuds/Hootax
Summary: The Night King marked Bran and created a connection between them that Bran learns to take advantage of. Mostly by way of getting under the Night King's skin.





	Markings

The ice was his garden, the mountain was his throne. He never slept or ate. He looked to the horizon, where the sun tried to pierce the clouds when it rose and was inevitably choked. His army grew by the day as dead flesh bent to his will. 

This was power; a curse turned into conquest. It was delicious to him. He sharpened his ice blade against rocks jutting out of the landscape. 

He met the boy who was to become the Three-Eyed Raven, once. He was young, his eyes clouded but mostly innocent. He was afraid. Fresh meat. 

The Night King sensed him immediately but waited until the boy came forward on his own accord. And then, when he had walked through the lines of the dead, the Night King set his eyes on him. Before he could flee, the Night King grabbed his arm, marking him, almost claiming him. The boy screamed and vanished, as abruptly as he had appeared. The Night King would find him and finish their centuries’ long pursuit.

Because the Raven was the world’s memory and had allied himself with the living. If there was no life, there was no one to remember. What had the Children of the Forest created him for but to rid the world of the legacy of humans?

More importantly, the Raven might be able to figure out how to kill him. He couldn’t have that.

~~

Brandon Stark wasn’t ready to become the Three-Eyed Raven, but these were desperate times. When he came into his powers, history flickered by him uncontrolled. Events were out of order. He saw someone die one moment and in the next, they were being born. He clasped his head but found he couldn’t move his body. His arm throbbed where it felt like frostbite had burnt him. 

The voice of the Bloodraven spoke in his ear and suddenly everything calmed. The world narrowed into a sharp focal point. Bran’s presence could be felt, but he seemed more like an echo. No, Bran was there but merged with everything else. He was Bran and so much more. He was one with the Bloodraven. The center of his forehead burned. 

The Night King knew when it happened. The connection between them suddenly went taut, like a rope. Suddenly, his target was no longer the boy, but the Three-Eyed Raven. If the Night King remembered how to, he would have smirked.

He began leading his armies south. 

~~

When they next met in a vision, the boy’s countenance had gone from timid to refined. The Night King was taller in stature, but somehow they were level with each other. The bruise on the Raven’s arm was covered. They were on the frozen plains of the North, but the Raven wasn’t intimidated anymore.

“We meet again,” the Raven said. 

The Night King came forward. The Raven’s vessel changed from time to time, but he was still the same. 

“I came to reason with you,” the Raven said. 

Hah! There was no reason in the world now. Only the potential to burn by fire or by ice. The Raven held his gaze.

“You turned against the Children of the Forest and drove them away. Humans separated themselves from the forests with the Wall. Why do we continue to fight?”

The Night King’s journey was far from over. He could never stop until the humans - the plague that walked the earth - was eradicated and brought underneath his rule.

"I see...Well, you cannot say that I didn't try."

The Night King started towards him, reaching for his throat. How he longed to feel the Raven's bones breaking underneath his hands.

But in the next instant, the Raven was gone. The wind whistled through the rib cages of the dead. 

~~

The dead shambled over a frozen lake. The Night King had taken the skeletal steed of a wight for himself. His calvary surrounded him on all sides.

A dark shape descended from the clouds, circling overhead. The Night King stopped and watched it. It had followed his horde for half a day. At first, it took great care to hide in trees and fog, but it had grown bolder. 

The Night King drew a sliver of ice and took aim. When the bird flew closer, he threw the spear. It impaled the bird straight through. With his army paused, he went over to inspect his mark. 

A black raven with a slit in between the eyes. 

~~

"That hurt, you know."

The Raven sat atop a fallen tower. The Night King peered up at him, self-satisfied. In this vision, they were in a different part of the Frostfangs. The Night King brought them here so the Raven couldn't track his army.

"Is that the reason? I am hurt," the Raven said, tilting his head. "I thought you wanted to be alone with me."

The Night King did not speak, but the Raven could decipher his thoughts through impressions and the connection between them. The boy who served as the vessel seemed to have had a healthy dose of curiosity, more so than the other Ravens. It explained why he kept coming back. The Night King had been irritated by this until he realized that he could extract information from him.

"As much as I am willing to tell, yes. But I don't intend to help you kill me."

What the Raven did tell, was about the game the humans were playing in the south. Which players had risen and which players had been taken out. And the Raven didn't mind telling all of this to his enemy because none of it mattered to the Night King. He didn’t care about alliances and gossip. Whether a hundred men stood in his way or a hundred thousand, they would be hewn down and turned to serve him. 

Once they met in a copse of evergreen trees that wept icicles. The Raven was silent for a long while. Some parts of the game had affected him as of late, even if subtly. For once, he was tight-lipped about the specifics.

"Do you remember your former life?" he asked, finally.

The Night King rarely thought of the times before his eyes turned blue. They were a remnant of the past and unimportant.

"I saw you with others. Your family. You had no children and no wife, but the tribe was your family."

The Raven may as well have been telling him how many pine cones were hanging above them. The Night King didn't care for this conversation.

"Actually, there are thirty-seven."

He was met with a perplexed stare.

"Pine cones." The Raven pointed upwards. “There are thirty-seven.”

The Night King had a sudden urge to throw an ice blade at him. 

~~

There was a lull in their meetings for a time, while the Raven was being hauled around on a sled by his companions. Eventually, he returned to the den of wolves to the south of the wall. The Night King had been in battle against the men of the Night’s Watch. They fought like injured wasps. Their numbers fell but they wouldn’t give up until death took them. The Night King craved it. He loved crushing their fire with his ice. And the more he reveled in it, the greedier he became.

Never did he feel so alive than when he was spreading the fingers of death across the land. 

When the seasons turned from autumn to winter and a chill settled over the land, the Night King found a weirwood tree and sought for the Raven. What he found was a dream that was more like a memory. He saw an adventurous boy climbing a tower, only to come across a depraved act and be shoved out of a window in retribution. The boy’s wolf pup whined and circled his unconscious body. 

After a moment, the boy’s eyes opened in the dream and fixed on him. A large raven cawed nearby, a warning, a threat. The garden where the boy had fallen gave way to a dark bedroom. Sleet fell outside, pelting against the window. The Raven was on the bed nearby, dressed in nightclothes and covered in silks and furs. When he saw his visitor, he took a sharp intake of breath, his eyes registering a little apprehension through the gloom as he sat up. It was the closest thing to emotion the Night King had ever seen on this Raven.

“What is this?” the Raven said.

Stupid question. The Night King came over to the bedside. The Raven’s eyes darted towards the door of the room, considering if he should call out for help. Except no one else would be able to see the Night King in this vision. Why the Raven didn’t get up and run was odd, until the Night King noticed that he was primarily using his arms to move away.

The fall of the child. The unmoving legs. Ah…a deliciously cruel discovery.

The Raven let out a slow breath. “Now you know,” he said. He had only ever appeared to the Night King as a whole and healthy young man. Such was not the case in reality, it appeared. This would make the Night King’s hunt so much easier. 

He reached out to run a claw across the Raven’s collar bone. The feeling was different than if he had been there in person, but the point came across anyway. The Raven pushed the Night King’s arm away. 

“Leave me,” he said. There was a command in his tone and the Night King was almost impressed. Even when broken and vulnerable, the Raven fought against him. 

Too bad no man alive told the Night King what to do. He caught the Raven’s wrist, the same one that bore his mark. His claws tightened around the bare flesh. The Raven didn’t try to pull away, just kept his gaze, measuring the threat. A shadow had fallen on his face. 

“You can do nothing to me here.”

Not physically, no. He could touch his prey to a certain extent, but there would be no sensation or pain. But there were other ways to strike at him. The Raven had apparently watched him in the past, enough to know he had no family. This castle must be owned by someone who held the Raven in high esteem. Perhaps a family of his own.

“Stop.”

That was the weakness in the Raven’s armor. Despite losing some of his humanity, he still felt obligated to protect his family.

“They can defend themselves well enough.”

There was a knock on the door. The Raven froze. The Night King released him slowly, letting his claws slide across his wrist. 

The door opened and a lady with sun-kissed hair stepped inside. She raised the candle she was holding.

“Bran? Who were you talking to just now? You sounded distressed,” she said.

“It was just a nightmare. Go back to sleep,” the Raven told her. 

She wasn’t convinced. She went to his bedside. “You’re shaking. Do you have a fever?”

The Night King slid out of the vision as the woman laid her hand on the Raven’s forehead. He had learned all he needed.

The next time he felt the presence of the Raven, it was as a flock. The Night King’s army numbered into the tens of thousands; not all of them human. The Night King conjured an ice storm to take them down. They fell in a mess of blood and feathers. He picked one up and it lay in his hand, twitching.

~~

He remembered the unblemished skin underneath his finger. He traced along the collar bone in his mind and imagined dragging his claws up the smooth throat. The body should have been that of a warrior, or at least a scout. Instead, he was a keeper of stories, the infinite scholar. His pulse fluttered with hot blood. 

The Raven always observed from its perch. It kept its hand out of the dealings of men. When someone died, it pecked at their remains and kept the knowledge left behind. Uncaring, Unbiased. 

This man - Bran was his name - no doubt knew the legacy that he inherited. He could tap into the memories of their past battles, the times when the Night King tried to destroy him. 

And yet this one had sought the Night King out. Out of what? Good will? Curiosity? Bloody fool. Fraternizing with the enemy was never a good idea. But that was what happened when you made a pup do a wolf's job. 

This time, their struggle would end and the Night King intended to be the victor. He would put this ancient bird to rest. Was it out of hatred? No. The thrill was in the hunt, of course, but he pursued the Raven the same way a Lord hunted a stag, with begrudging reverence for the prey that was determined to survive. 

He drew the line from the Raven's jaw, down his throat, and to his heart in his mind's eye. His hunger grew. 

He thought the Raven would keep his distance after that, if not shut a gate between them entirely. It would make the most sense for him to protect himself and his family. 

Which was why it was so unexpected when he came to the Night King again, on top of a cliff overlooking a frozen plain. Any trace of trepidation was gone. 

"You left something behind again," the Raven said. 

The Night King raised an eyebrow almost imperceptibly. The Raven reached up and undid the top ties of his waistcoat. Despite the frigid wind, he didn't have goose flesh. He pulled his coat aside to reveal his collar bone which had a long, dark blue line running down its length where the Night King had touched. 

So now he was double-marked. Briefly, the Night King wondered if there was anywhere else he could leave his mark where the Ravens carers might see. 

But then the Raven strode closer until they were standing a forearm's length apart. The Raven's head tilted up to hold his gaze. 

"You've thought of me a lot, haven't you? Both of them burn when you do." The Raven's voice was level, but strong. "I came to return the favor."

He placed his hand over the spot where the Night King's icy heart should have been, where the dragonglass sliver rested. The Night King only had a moment to wonder at this before he felt a flame on his chest. He tried to shove the Raven away roughly, but he had stepped back just out of reach. Where his hand had been was an imprint of ash. 

A snarl clawed its way out of the Night King's throat. He unsheathed his sword, but the Raven was already gone.

~~

The Night King understood now why this Raven was the one to face him. His will was thick as leather and his soul was quietly fierce as a wolf. He was the summer to bring the end to the winter. He opened himself up to the Night King, unlike any Raven before him. The last one had hidden himself in the tangles of a weirwood tree.

In his mind's eye, he pinned the Raven to a boulder of obsidian by his throat. The Raven gasped, his eyes glowing with something like lust. He arched his back in the Night King's hold, begging, aching to be touched. The Night King hadn't been hunting a stag, he had been hunting a wolf. 

A knife would carve him and the Night King would drink his blood. But a different song called to him and he imagined hooking his arms underneath the Raven's legs, supporting him while he plunged something else into that warm body. The Raven's cries echoed over the north. 

The handprint on his chest seared into him. This was a sensation the Night King thought he had forgotten. The heat of intimacy, the hunger that rose in him.

Killing the Raven had driven him for millennia. He would set his fingers on the side of his face and breathe a shadow into him. The Raven's eyes would open with a glimmering blue. His Night Prince. 

On a moonless night, the Night King went to the Raven's home with another Weirwood Tree. It was dark it the godswood. A breeze rustled the red branches and gently caressed the Raven's hair. 

He was sitting on a chair with large wheels at the side. He was still, with white eyes. When the Night King appeared, however, his eyes turned dark again. His cheeks were tinged with a pink that had nothing to do with the cold. 

"We'll meet soon, face-to-face. Will you still desire me, I wonder?" said the Raven. He tilted his head. "My brother will not rest until you are destroyed."

No matter. The Night King would cut him down too. And then the Raven would be his. They had marked each other and the strand between them was reeling them in ever closer. The Long Night was the culmination of an age.

The Raven looked thoughtful. "Yes, I think so too. I wonder...if it is your victory, how long you will keep me as your prince. I wouldn't be able to please you in certain matters." He gestured to the lower half of his body. "You would tire of me eventually." 

The Night King had existed this long without these cravings. He would be fine. Having the Raven as his prize was promising enough. But it was a pity this incarnation of the Raven existed without ever knowing the pleasures of the flesh.

"I suppose you know much about that, hm?

The Night King's expression had a hint of an amused smirk. But he still intended to bring the Raven into his rule. Did the power of the throne not tempt him?

"I am not tempted by power."

Someone had to take up the seat. Why not let it be the ones who had seen ages rather than these squabbling children in their lavish castles. The ice would spread over them, cracking their stone, their iron, their bones. The Night King would take the other dragons besides the one he had dragged up from the icy lake. With all three of them, he would be unopposed. And from the mix of ash and snow would rise his wights. A people who worshipped them without voices and obeyed without question.

"That sounds terribly boring."

The wheel of humanity would spin eternally with war and suffering if allowed to go on. It was they, at the pinnacle of their strength, who would break it and rule over the endless night.

"..."  
~~

His hordes stayed back, watching without seeing. They were there to receive instruction, not question him. 

The Night King wasn’t used to people looking at him without fear. Even with the slow approach of the towering figure, the Raven was not intimidated. He peered up with something like pity in his expression. There was a flash of chagrin in the Night King’s mind and his fingers itched for the hilt of his sword; to imprint fear on the Raven’s face. The opportunity was ripe, his conquest delicious. For thousands of years he had waited for his old enemy to perish. 

And yet…

“Will you do it?” the Raven said. “Right this moment would be the time. Will you stab through my heart or behead me? I cannot fight you.”

The Night King laid a hand on the furs over one of the Raven’s thighs, his fingers digging in, searing it with ice. It went deep enough to reach his skin. He grimaced a bit. 

“I can still feel the flesh, but I cannot control it,” the Raven said. “I suppose it won’t matter soon, anyway. Ah well, I enjoyed our talks. You indulged my curiosity.”

The hand moved to the Raven’s face, lifting it with strong fingers wrapped around his jaw. His expression was regal and serene as ever. This time, his touch didn’t bruise. Finally, the Raven closed his eyes and the Night King leaned down to crush their lips together. The Raven’s kiss was warm, nearly hot. There was a soft sound, like a sigh, in the back of his throat. 

The Night King felt the pull of something long buried for eons, which he thought was lost to time and a frozen body. It was a whisper through a hollow space, a quelling of the anger and ambition. Odd to think that this was where their paths had taken them - two eternal, opposing forces intertwining before the end of the world. One of death and one of memory.

The Raven pulled back a hair’s width. His eyes had gone pale. 

“You wish to join with me,” he murmured. “We will be one in the Wierwood trees.” He brushed his lips against the Night Kings again, almost wistfully.

Something tore through the midsection of the Night King’s armor. It was like an earthquake splintering a glacier. He didn’t feel the pain, but he felt the chasm. He jerked away from the Raven and glowered downwards to see where a young woman had stuck him with a knife - Valyrian Steel. It screeched inside his wound. The chasm widened. The Night King reached for his sword, but hand shattered and blew into the wind. The rest of him followed, becoming nothing more than chunks of ice falling and burying themselves in the snow, the ancient king returning to the elements. 

His last vision was of the Raven, with his hands tucked in his lap, watching him crumble.

~~

Arya rushed forward and grasped at Bran’s hands. Her face was cut and bleeding. 

“Bran, Bran! Are you hurt? Did he do anything to you?” she said, quickly.

Bran’s face softened. “No. I am well.”

~~

King's Landing was nothing more than debris and ash. Men half-charred wandered the streets in a daze. Bran had watched Danaerys burn it all in retribution for...something. She felt justified and that was all that mattered. 

He saw when Jon Snow stabbed her, saw the last living dragon pick her up and fly east. The Long Night and the Day of Flames were over. He sighed as he came out of the greensight. 

He was going to have to go to King's Landing now. They would want a King. 

"I do not want it," he had told so many others, including the Night King. From the beginning of the game, it was going to be one of the two of them, Bran could see that now. All they had needed was to wait for the other players to eliminate themselves. Now Bran was settling into his powers. Westeros wasn't going to survive if it had ambition at its helm. It needed the wisdom to know how to pick up the pieces and put them back together. 

Bran had no other task than to keep the memory of the world surviving. For this, he had done much. The pieces were set and knocked over. 

Maybe he and the Night King weren't so different after all. 

~~

When the small council asked Bran how the Keep should be rebuilt, he told them "anything but red." When they came to him for an answer to their problems, he gave it to them before they even opened their mouths. It took some time for Tyrion to get used to this (get used to him, really).

Sansa kept in contact through letters from her kingdom. She had taken a great risk, breaking them off independently, but truthfully, Bran was glad for it. There was no one else he would rather have seated at Winterfell. She seemed relieved that he hadn't fought her over it. And it relieved him of a Kingdom. Unfortunately, six kingdoms were still six more than he wanted.

When he was alone, he searched for Drogon; it didn't seem wise to let a lonely and grieving dragon wander the world unsupervised. When he wasn't searching for the dragon, he went back to that moment. During the Long Night in the godswood. With the Night King holding his face. A surprisingly tender moment after so much bloodshed. 

He noted, with some amusement, that the Night King was Brandon Stark's first kiss. Nothing about his life could be normal, could it? Under normal circumstances, he would have married Meera. Under slightly less normal circumstances, he would have married Podrick.

When winter approached King's Landing, Bran found himself gazing outside of the windows of his chambers. His carers insisted that he be buried in furs with the fire in the hearth to keep him from taking ill. When they left him, he wheeled his chair away from the hearth and placed about three layers of fur on his bed before he was hot enough to be feverish. 

Snow drifted lazily downward from plump clouds. Some stuck to the window panes and he saw their delicate designs. So beautiful in the breath of winter. 

He supposed he was dwelling on the Night King, in his own way. Bran could visit the past whenever he wanted, but it was empty. They hadn't exactly been on the best terms for the majority of history. He felt...a desire for understanding. Humans lived in the present while he lived in the past. No one but another eternal knew what it was like to watch ages go by. 

~~~

Sansa invited him to visit Winterfell before the new year. The threat over the wall was gone, but superstition was difficult to let go of. She hoped that having Bran there might cheer everyone up. 

'We are the only Starks who remained in this land, she wrote. We are family. We should be able to see each other, shouldn't we? Will you come home for a while?' she wrote.

Familial love didn't occur to him anymore. Strong emotions were lost on him altogether. He remembered how he felt as a child, but he was indifferent to everything now. All the same, he decided to be kind.

He took Brienne and a handful of guards with him up north before the roads froze over. He left King's Landing in the hands of his council and wondered if there would still be a city when he came back. 

She embraced him again when they arrived. She kissed his forehead. “You’re putting some meat on your bones. I’m glad,” she said.

She threw him a feast with hearty food and music and mead. He may have had a bit too much drink. His face felt hot and he was strangely giddy (as much as he could be, anyway). Sansa's laughter was infectious. It was the familiarity of it all that affected Bran the most, from the days of his childhood when he would sit in the great hall with his brothers, sisters, mother, and father. He was still innocent back then. The fates had given him those small joys before taking him away to fulfill his destiny.

When the festivities were over, it was late, but there was something else he wanted to do before retiring. He went to the godswood to find the weirwood tree (few of them grew in the south and he missed them.) The moonlight played tricks through the trees. The night wind cooled on his mead-flushed cheeks. 

He peered at the face on the weirwood tree. It slumbered peacefully, even as it wept. He wanted to lay back against the tree and let its roots wrap around him but doing so required more coordination than he currently had. He settled for resting his hand on the bark and was immediately pulled into a dream. 

Everything pulsed with breath and color. He let the wave pick him up and carry him with it. Time spun the world, trailing it back, back. Until the grass was wild and the weathered rocks were jagged. He was on a Cape overlooking a frothy sea. Normally, his visions were vivid, but here everything was blurred and surreal - a side effect of the mead, perhaps?

And then he saw the figure along the shore, stoking a fire. Lean with sun-touched skin and hair the color of sand. Bran knew this man, even if it had only been once, for a short time. He drew closer and saw the limbs that were still made of ice and the handprint over his heart. A sliver of consciousness must have been kept in the weirwoods' web. 

He noticed Bran, but didn't seem surprised. His face was soft, albeit scruffy. He held out his hand in invitation and brought Bran down next to him. Bran wove their fingers together and leaned into his side.

**Author's Note:**

> This helped me overcome a huge obstacle in my case of chronic writer's block. I blame the final episode for converting me to the Brandom.
> 
> I noticed other fics marked Raven Bran as underage, so I was trying to figure out if I should give this an archive warning too. But I thought that by the time Bran starts interacting with the Night King, he's 17? And he has the history of the world downloaded into his Bran, so I thought he would have the mental maturity to deal with this ship. 
> 
> BUT if people request me to put the Underage warning up, I will definitely comply.


End file.
